"And we really messed up. And we're all very sorry. That didn't belong on TV. We took every precaution we knew how to take to keep that from being on TV. And I personally apologzie to you that that happened.

Sometimes we see a lot of things that we don't let get to you, because it's not time appropriate, it's insensitve, it's just wrong. And that was just wrong. And that won't happen again on my watch, and I'm sorry"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...crime&ir=Crime

Hmph. Kinda considerate of the guy to off himself and save everybody some money prosecuting him. Perhaps they need to stop cutting away from such stuff on live TV. It should set a good example for other such idiots in the future.

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I was watching and saw it happen. Shocking, but no real blood or gore was shown. The car jacker was running around and appeared to be disoriented. He hid behind a bush raised the pistol to his head and then fell over.

Hmph. Kinda considerate of the guy to off himself and save everybody some money prosecuting him. Perhaps they need to stop cutting away from such stuff on live TV. It should set a good example for other such idiots in the future.

There was a similar incident on the local Los Angeles stations about 15 years ago, but it was probably worse, as the guy pulled out a shotgun and shot himself in the chin.

Spoilerized for the squeamish:

Spoiler:

He basically blasted off the top of his head, and the "spray" was quite visible to viewers.

There was a big uproar about it because it was in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday and the coverage had preempted kids cartoons.

Edit: Here's the incident:

Quote:

Originally Posted by wiki article

April 30, 1998 – Daniel V. Jones, a cancer and HIV-positive patient apparently frustrated with his HMO coverage, ended a live televised stand-off with police on a Los Angeles freeway by committing suicide, shooting himself in the chin with a shotgun. The event, which took place on a Thursday afternoon, was witnessed by many children whose after-school cartoons had been interrupted in order to broadcast the incident, which originally began as a high-speed pursuit, and led many to criticize Los Angeles television stations' practice of airing police pursuits live.

TV Station I work at came this close (picture my thumb and forefinger right next to each other) to showing a guy getting shot by the SWAT team on live TV outside our building last night.

Guy calls the station about an hour before our 10pm News starts saying he is outside the building with a bomb strapped to his chest and is going to set it off.
Guy manning the desk asks the guy to hold, then calls 911.
Guy has a backpack with wires coming out of it to something in his hand, and is sitting on the light rail stop in front of our building.

Police swarm in and try to talk the guy down for about 2 hours.
During this time, SWAT has mobilized and have set up sniper nests right in front of our windows looking out on main street, on top of our building, on top of the building across the street and down the street.
Guy ends up getting agitated, rushes the cops reaching into the backpack supposedly holding the bomb and one of the SWAT shoots him dead center mass.

We had just switched from live footage of the guy talking to the cops, to our anchors in the studio.
We had to resort to using our kitchen set for our 10pm News, police said we couldn't broadcast from our normal set which is just a window away from the bomb guy, Kitchen set is on the other side of the building.

We did see it happen in on our monitors though, kinda surreal.

Two bomb squad robots come in and gently pick up the backpack, then slowly work their way down the street a little ways.
Bomb squad armored truck comes and parks between the backpack and the guys body so paramedics can get to work trying to save the guy who's obviously been dead about a half hour, guess they have to keep appearances by pretending to try to save the guy.
During this time we are trying to show the bomb robots, then the paramedics, all without showing the body lying in a pool of blood.

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Shephard Smith made it a LOT worse by yelling a thousand times to get off it. Just shut up, cut away, and apologize later. If kids ARE watching, they're not going to get what just happened if you don't make a HUGE deal about it.

Two, I always recommend pulling up your pants before offing yourself on live TV.

(And I feel a little bad about that joke. But I couldn't help myself.)

Shephard Smith made it a LOT worse by yelling a thousand times to get off it. Just shut up, cut away, and apologize later. If kids ARE watching, they're not going to get what just happened if you don't make a HUGE deal about it.

He wasn't trying to make a big deal about it. He was trying to get the attention of whomever the dumbass was running the "dump" button, and get them to do their job.

I think Shephard did everything right in this case (except working for Fox News, of course... can't help that one).

It could have been a lot worse, if someone had zoomed in, or the shot had resulted in more of a JFK type exit wound. It happened pretty quickly in that he was running, stumbling, kinda hiding and then all of a sudden he shoots.

I thought the concern, attempt to censor, and apology were all very respectable and sincere. I actually appreciate both the channel and anchor more for their handling of the coverage.

I've seen a lot of these kinda situations covered by local southern California news and it was almost refreshing to see someone genuinely upset with the situation and unfortunate result.